![]() On the front lines of this mission are a couple of architects, a passionate young gravedigger and a scientist working hard to compost a cow. How that 54 pounds of our organic matter and minerals might be more effectively returned to the living planet is the business of the rising “ecodeath” movement. Instead of nourishing our environment after death the way it nourished us during life, for the last 150 years, the legacy we leave behind is largely toxic sludge. Scientists say this may be contributing to nutrient-poor soils, as well as air pollution when chemical additives are burned during cremation. In the current mainstream American system of embalming a body with chemicals, then entombing or cremating remains, very little of our bodily nutrients - carbon, calcium, nitrogen, phosphorus and more - are returned to our ecosystems in a usable way. After subtracting water weight, that means we depart this world holding on to about 54 pounds of mass we borrowed from the plants and animals we ate while we were alive. The average human weighs 136 pounds at the time of their death. But conventional practices of embalming and cremation prevent their recycling, hindering our ability to give back that which we have attained from other living things. These nutrients exist as finite, limited resources in the world. These riches we hoard in our graves are the mineral building blocks necessary for those still alive - the carbon in our skin, the iron in our blood and the calcium in our bones.
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